"Black Friday" is truly happening! The Chicago Mercantile Exchange suddenly crashes, leaving global traders collectively dumbfounded.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME.US) has always prided itself as the "global risk management Hub Group, Inc. Class A". However, on Friday, this "Hub Group, Inc. Class A" shut the global market out. Due to a data center malfunction, trading in CME Group Inc. Class A futures and options was completely halted, causing turmoil that quickly spread to multiple markets, affecting various contracts with a nominal value of tens of trillions of dollars. This interruption covered S&P 500 Index futures, the forex trading platform EBS, as well as various asset classes such as U.S. bonds, crude oil, gasoline, and palm oil. A petroleum trader in Singapore revealed that around 10:30 a.m. local time on Friday, when they first received an alert, they initially thought it was false information as trading data and quotes were still being pushed normally. However, a few minutes later, the trading screens suddenly froze, and their team was forced to exit the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) trading platform. As a core platform relied upon by global traders, the service outage of CME Group Inc. Class A resulted in the normally flashing trading screens coming to a standstill, forcing market participants to urgently seek alternative channels to sustain trading operations. "This is really a headache, we were planning to hedge some index options positions," said Gerald Gan, Deputy Chief Investment Officer of Singapore's Reed Capital Partners. "Service providers are urgently searching for alternative solutions, but the liquidity certainly cannot be compared to CME Group Inc. Class A." The reactions from various sectors of the market confirmed the importance of CME Group Inc. Class A - an institution that began as the "Chicago Butter and Egg Board" in the late 19th century and has now become a core element of the global financial infrastructure deeply embedded in traders' daily workflow. According to data from CME Group Inc. Class A, the average daily trading volume of its derivative contracts exceeded 26 million lots in October; on November 20, U.S. bond futures and options open interest contracts hit a historical high of 35.1 million lots, with a daily average nominal trading volume of $1 trillion in just E-mini S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures. In recent years, exchange system disruptions have been frequent, with technical failures becoming a significant risk factor affecting the global pricing system. In June 2024, the New York Stock Exchange experienced a malfunction during a software update, temporarily halting trading in about 40 stocks and displaying abnormal data showing a 99% price drop; earlier in the same year, technical issues led to a nearly three-hour interruption in Nasdaq's early trading session. In Europe, the London Stock Exchange experienced three system crashes in just a few months at the end of 2023, one of which resulted in the suspension of trading in thousands of stocks. The duration of this CME Group Inc. Class A outage has exceeded the technical disruption in 2019 (which lasted for several hours), raising questions about the exchanges, data center operators, and the completeness of emergency plans. According to the latest announcement on the CME Group Inc. Class A website, the EBS Market platform for forex trading reopened at noon London time. However, the notice did not provide information on when other affected markets, including stocks, bonds, and commodities, would resume operations. For bulk commodity traders, this interruption coincided with the monthly expiration of U.S. gasoline and diesel futures contracts, which may involve physical delivery upon expiration. Some crude oil brokers expressed their helplessness, stating that trading was expected to be light after Thanksgiving, and the CME Group Inc. Class A system failure made trading even more difficult, leaving them wondering why they had to work. An employee at Trafigura commented on a related LinkedIn post, saying, "This is truly a Black Friday." While trading in U.S. bond futures was restricted, cash bond trading was intermittent, and a decrease in traders' hedging ability could further impact trading volumes. However, some traders pointed out that the activity of alternative hedging tools such as swaps increased after the London market opened. European and UK bond futures were not affected as they trade on other exchanges. "We usually use derivatives for tactical trading, but obviously we couldn't operate this morning," said Amelie Derambure, Portfolio Manager at Amundi SA. "Fortunately, markets are quiet today, but if this happened during a busier trading period, the impact would be unimaginable." Global markets chain reaction Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, the U.S. stock market only operated for half a day on Friday, with low trading expected. In addition, with no significant economic data releases and the Federal Reserve in a silent period before the December interest rate meeting, the market was even quieter. "It's fortunate that it's a quiet period after Thanksgiving," said Emmanuel Valavanis, a stock sales expert at Forte Securities. "Even so, for this to happen on the last trading day of the month is bad enough, and for many mutual funds, this is also a critical period at the end of the year, undoubtedly exacerbating potential risks. Freezing trades worth trillions of dollars is definitely not a good thing for the parties involved." Some investors, given the already thin market liquidity and the added risk of system disruptions, chose to temporarily stay out of the market. "On days when liquidity is so scarce, I already take a cautious approach to trading," said Rajeev De Mello, Chief Investment Officer at Geneva's Gama Asset Management. "This system outage has made me even more determined to stay on the sidelines."